Forum Digest: Psychokinesis

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File Updated:
Thursday, June 22, 2017

While every healthy
Loroi has some
telepathic ability,
psychokinesis is more rare and unpredictable. Psychokinesis is
the manipulation of matter and electromagnetism using mental
power. Psychokinetic abilities can move objects at a distance,
make them hotter or colder, or interfere with electrical
systems. I will refer to psychokinesis with the abbreviation "PK"
throughout this article.

PK is rare among Loroi, occurring in less than five percent
of the population. There is no known gene for PK; rather, it is
an emergent trait that is unpredictable and not very well
understood. Offspring of parents
with PK are statistically more likely to have PK themselves than
children of normal parents, but it's not clear exactly why. PK can appear in
either female or male children. As soon as PK
use is identified in an individual, he or she is promptly rushed into
special testing/training programs. Female psychokinetic children
will usually be trained as Teidar (Unsheathed) or Mizol specialists,
regardless of what caste the mother came from -- this is one of
the few cases in which a civilian child may be permitted to enroll
in a military caste. Male psychokinetics are cloistered within a
specialized philosopher order, about which little is known.

Usage, Power and Skill

Most psychokinetic abilities such as telekinesis may be used
at will, instantly, without cost. Some of the more taxing
abilities require careful concentration and may be fatiguing to
the user to maintain over extended periods. As with telepathy,
the strength of psychokinesis depends on the user's inherent
power, which is essentially inborn and once the user has reached
her full potential, power can only be improved through the
use of mechanical amplifiers. The degree of control that a user
has over her abilities is determined by skill, which is learned
and may be improved through practice. Most PK abilities are very
difficult to master and require a great deal of rigorous
training. Fireblade has very high PK
power but limited skill; she can shove very heavy objects but
not finely manipulate them. Tempo, on the other hand, has low PK
power but excellent skill; she can lift less than a kilogram,
but can finely manipulate remote switches and rearrange the
objects on your desk when you're not looking. Although use of
some difficult PK abilities may fatigue the user,
the actual kinetic energy that is exerted is not drawn directly
from the psi herself. The energy comes from "somewhere else."
Also, the user does not experience any "equal and opposite"
force to the one she is exerting; when she pushes against an
object, she herself is not pushed in the other direction. For
more on this see Laws of Physics below.

Range

Except where noted otherwise, there is no explicit range limit for
PK abilities, but the user must
be able to accurately visualize or touch the object. Visualization
may be through artificial or telepathic means, or via some other
sensory method, usually at a penalty to effective skill. Relying
only on one's own vision, range will be practically limited to
that at which you can accurately judge distance, which will
probably be 25-50 meters for most people. A living target may
give off a telepathic signature that can be used to help in
determining range, so attacks against a living target will be
subject to telepathic sensory range. Attacks at very long range
will be very difficult; looking through a scope will let you see
a target at long range, but will not help you judge the
distance.

Limitations

Because psychokinetic abilities are mental, psychology can be
a significant factor in their use, and a user's personal quirks
may limit her power in some circumstances and enhance it in
others. Such arbitrary limitations are relatively common Loroi
PK's. For example, Teidar Mothwing is able to
levitate herself
by telekinesis with ease, but she can only lift external objects that are about
half her weight. Fireblade's psychokinesis is partially
uncontrolled; she experiences a dramatic increase in power when
she becomes enraged.

Amplification

When the Loroi first explored Mezan (the innermost planet of
Deinar) in 780 CE, among other Soia-era artifacts they discovered remnants of
ancient psionic amplifiers. While the Loroi to this day to not
fully understand the principle on which these amplifiers work,
they were
able to reverse-engineer them and duplicate their effect, which
is to increase the base power of telepathic or psychokinetic
abilities by 50% or more. The nation that conducted the mission
(Zaral) used these new amplifiers to devastating effect in the
Deinar World War that followed some 50 years later.

Current psychokinetic amplifiers are comparatively small and
portable, weighing just a few kilograms, and are worn on the
head of the user. PK amplifiers must be tailored to each individual PK
user for optimal effect, and increase in power varies by individual. A variety of side effects can
result from amplification, again varying by individual, including
headaches, fatigue, nausea, temporary impairment of vision, or
reduction in effective PK skill. In extreme cases of prolonged
amplification, lesions or plaques can form in the brain,
resulting in seizures, permanent loss of vision, psychosis, or even death.

Teidar PK's are nearly always outfitted with appliances for
both psychokinetic and telepathic amplification, which they tend
to wear at all times while on duty. Mizol occasionally use
telepathic amplifiers for specific purposes, but rarely wear PK
amplification appliances.

Psychokinetic Abilities

The list of abilities below is not exhaustive, but rather
consists of
those that are available to
the Teidar and Mizol characters in the story (chiefly Fireblade
and Tempo). Each listed ability represents at least one separately
trained skill, but
all are based on the same psychokinetic power.

Telekinesis

This is the ability to move objects by mental power.
Telekinesis (TK) can be used to move any object, including yourself;
if you
have power sufficient to lift your own weight, and control such
that you don't hurl yourself into the ceiling, you can
"levitate" with it. TK power is rated by the
maximum amount of kinetic force that a user can exert on an
object (see table below); a sufficiently skilled user may affect
multiple objects at once, but the total force should not exceed her
maximum rating. A user may attempt to strain and exert more than
her normal rated force, but this extra effort will rapidly
fatigue the user and will usually reduce effective skill level.

A TK can throw objects at a target (or the target itself into
a wall), but she can also attack the target directly with pure
force. Such attacks bypass armor and can potentially be targeted
at vulnerable organs (such as the brain), and so are potentially deadly
even at modest power levels. Given more time and the appropriate
anatomical knowledge, a less powerful TK can attack by
constricting the heart, pinching off blood vessels, etc. The
table below lists maximum kinetic force and damage from a
brute-force direct TK attack by PK power (the strength and
damage values are from the GURPS system; the damage numbers have
no relation to those in the Shipboard Weapons Profiles):

Telekinesis can also be used as an active defense, to
block/parry a blow or to swat away a thrown object. The user
must be able to see the attack and be quick enough to respond to
it -- things like bullets could not be deflected in this manner,
unless the user had some superhuman method of being able to see
and react to a bullet in flight.

Thermokinesis

This is the ability to raise or lower the temperature of an
object by exciting or slowing molecular motion within it. The
rate at which this is accomplished depends on the mass of the
object and the PK power of the user: 1 kg of mass can be heated
or cooled by 28 degrees Celsius (50 degrees Fahrenheit) each
second for each level of PK power.

Electrokinesis

This is the ability to increase or dampen electrical
activity. A user can attempt to damage a device by triggering an
electrical surge, or shut one down by dampening the electrical
field within it. This ability can even be used to attack a
person, by disrupting the electrical impulses of the nervous
system.

Feedback

Although most PK abilties provide no direct feedback (the
target must be visualized or sensed in some other manner), some
sensitive psychokinetics do have the ability to sense
electromagnetic fields or even matter itself. The ability to
sense energy has a relatively short range (typically tens of
meters), and the ability to sense matter has an even shorter
range (often less than a meter), but users with these sensory
abilities may be able to directly image the interior of a target
without any other outside assistance, making them especially
dangerous.

I had said in posts before that "there is no TK sense," but
that was something of an untruth. What I meant was that
telekinesis itself does not have inherent feedback, and that
Fireblade in particular does not have this separate PK sensory
ability.

I Canna Change the Laws o' Physics... or Can I?

In
addition to the question of how the effect is generated in the
first place, psychokinesis as described in Outsider violates two
laws of physics: the First Law of Thermodynamics (which states
that energy cannot be added to or removed from a closed system)
and Newton's Third Law of Motion, which states that for each
action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Outsider
"solves" this problem by not dealing with it: in an argument
similar to the one used for hyperspace, we merely suppose that
the PK force and the energy that powers it is somehow summoned
from "outside" our observable system.

This may seem like a cop-out -- and it is -- but given the
story requirements, there aren't many better options. More
"realistic" psi systems that require the psi's body to supply
the energy for her abilities and to experience an equal and
opposite reaction force would make such abilities useless in
story terms.

The more "realistic" you try to get with telekinetic systems,
the more problems you run into. If you're experiencing the
Newtonian "pushback" from your TK use, chances are you're
experiencing that force specifically in whatever organ is
producing the "TK field". How much force you can apply is going
to be limited by how much pushback force you can withstand
yourself, and if said organ is your brain, that's going
to be a serious limitation. Even if the pushback force is
somehow spread across your whole body, your TK is still going to
be limited more or less to the amount you could physically lift
yourself. Trying to lift a boulder is out of the question...
you'll crush yourself.
Then there's the question of the first law of thermodynamics:
how do you supply the energy required to generate TK force? If
your body is required to supply this energy through it's own
metabolism, this is also going to limit you to lifting not much
more via TK than you could physically. I recall someone telling
me about a system for powering TK -- I think it might have been
a Niven short story -- in which the TK user "paid" for the TK use by
having heat drawn out of his body... and if he lifted something
too heavy, he'd freeze to death. You could develop some sort of
"equal exchange" system to justify the power source, similar to
that used in Full Metal Alchemist, in which which the TK
user converts matter to energy and uses this to somehow generate
a force. However, it seems to me that these "solutions" create more believability problems
than they solve, as they sound as much like magic as any other part
of the system.

The Outsider story requirement is that Fireblade has very powerful
telekinesis, able to apply several tons of force. Given this requirement, it seems to me the
only "realistic" solution is that this force and the energy
required to power it can't originate directly from Fireblade's
body, as the "equal and opposite" force would kill her, and a
humanlike body really isn't capable of producing that kind of
energy anyway. So that means it has to come from somewhere else.
Where? I think it's best in this case to say "nobody knows" and leave it at
that.

Adding detail does not always add realism. If you're on shaky
scientific ground to begin with, trying to explain a system you
don't understand can do more harm than good. There is also the issue
of artificial replication: the more you understand about the
mechanism that makes psi
work, the more likely you should be able to artificially replicate
the effect and eliminate the need for living psis altogether,
which defeats the purpose of having psionics in the first place.

Q&A

Does the force available depend on the mass, volume, or cross
section of the object? Or can it be exerted on a small pebble as
easily as on a wall?

I think this would depend on your degree of skill at
manipulation. Ideally, you could choose whether to spread the
force across a large area or focus it on a small area.

As for the PK...regardless of heat capacity or phase changes? Or
for your typical bag of mostly water?

Both PK applications involve adding energy (in the form of heat
or kinetic energy) essentially from "somewhere else," so I
wouldn't think that conductivity or heat capacity of the target
would matter.

Speaking of which.. can Loroi detect
the use of telepathy (specifically subtle tk) by other Loroi?

Telepathy can be detected, but it's not automatic, especially
if the user is attempting to conceal it. Psychokinesis can only
be detected by individuals with specific skills to detect it.

It has been mentioned that Teidar can take
out armored vehicles.
Fireblade can exert several tons of force but that's not even
enough to lift a turret out, much less tear it apart, and she's
one of the most powerful Teidar there is. If by tear apart you
mean she can pull bits and pieces off then yes, faced with an
Abrams she could probably rip the Ma Deuce off of it or break
the optics, but she's not going to be able to split the tank in
half.

Fireblade can punch holes in armored vehicles (or anything
else) by heating a location on the surface until the structure
begins to fail, then applying force to the heated section. This
does take several seconds, so a quicker and more effective way
to disable an armored vehicle is usually to attack something
more vulnerable: the treads, the weapon, the fuel tank, the crew,.
etc. Since Signature detection can be used to locate the
crewmembers, even if they are not visible, the crew is an
especially vulnerable target.